Last Updated on November 10, 2020
A UK government spokesman admitted to the hidden message in Boris Johnson’s tweet congratulating Biden, that showed President Trump’s name, blaming the “closely-contested election.”
National File broke the story on Tuesday that there was a fragment of a message to President Trump in Boris Johnson’s congratulations message to Joe Biden. The mainstream British press then picked up on the story, forcing the government to respond.
Congratulations @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris pic.twitter.com/xrpE99W4c4
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 7, 2020
A government spokesperson said: “As you’d expect, two statements were prepared in advance for the outcome of this closely-contested election. A technical error meant that parts of the alternative message were embedded in the background of the graphic.”
This statement would seem to acknowledge that President Trump has, thus far, refused to concede the election, and is pursuing lawsuits over credible claims of voter fraud in six battleground states.
After the US media declared that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the presidential election, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted out a congratulatory message to the pair.
“Congratulations to Joe Biden on his election as President of the United States and to Kamala Harris on her historic achievement,” the statement read. “The US is our most important ally and I look forward to working closely together on our shared priorities, from climate change to trade and security.”
However, further detailed inspection of the image posted by Johnson reveals that beneath the message there is the remains of another congratulatory message, but to President Trump, not Biden and Harris.
One Twitter user was the first to notice that when analysing the image in Photoshop, and even just with the naked eye with a careful look, “Trump” can be seen just above “Biden.”
National File consulted an independent expert in graphic design, who posited a theory on what had occurred. The expert noted that the fractals in the image suggested the unseen bits of text were sloppily removed with the paint bucket tool, suggesting the text layer could not be edited as a whole, meaning the image had been already saved previously.
This would imply that the message congratulating President Trump on his victory had already been prepared, and ready to go, and that Boris Johnson and Downing Street did not think the creation of two images was necessary, expecting the President to be re-elected.
https://twitter.com/CoofSpreader/status/1326032335750377472
National File again contacted 10 Downing Street for comment on their use of the phrase “closely contested” to explain Johnson’s apparent gaffe and did not receive an immediate response.
